MAGIC BONES

Evening Star, Issue 21624, 20 January 1934, Page 5

MAGIC BONES

One of the most common and most dreaded forms of magic practised by Australian aborigines is bone-pointing. No matter how civilised the native may be, if h-e feels that a magic bone has ooen pointed at him ho succumbs at once to the evil influence and before very long he dies. Quite recently a black tracker belonging to a police (party died from bonepointing. He had been long familiar with white men and their ways, hut no exertion on the part of the police could save his life. He made no resistance to the evil influence, but turned on his side and died. The victims sometimes live for a few days or weeks, and there have been rare occasions where a powerful sorcerer has been able to “pull out” the dreaded magic bone or other pointing object, and so save the life of the magic-stricken man. The bones used in this gruesome magic are usually taken from a killed and eaten man. They are polished and painted and sung over with magic incantations and practices. Many of these bones may be hundreds of years old, so finely polished have they become. Many belong to the group and not to individual members, and these may represent a human ancestor of a present animal or other group totem which, according to native belief, had been a man in the dream-times of long ago. For thousands of generations bonepointing or other magic pointing has been carried on between groups or between individuals. Practically all deaths are attributed to some such magic, as no native (they point out) would get ill of himself, and so _an enemy must have sent the death sickness.

These deaths are an absolute surrender to the fatal magic bone, a sort of auto-suggestive suicide, A man possessing a pointing bone has an enemy he wishes to kill. He goes to some secluded spot, rubs and polishes the bone, singing incantations, including the enemy’s name, over it. Certain substances may be rubbed on the bone to make_ it more deadly and the death of the victim painful. The bone is then held in one hand, while the other hand, cuprped' to keep in the magic, points it in the right direction. Sometimes the bone is left buried in the ground with just a tiny point or edge showing. Far away the victim suddenly cries out “ Maa’mu ” (Magic); then speaks no more. He has felt a mysterious something entering bis vitals; his death is certain. His group retaliates with their magic pointing bones, and kill -a member of the offending group.